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While Russian troops advance into Ukraine, the Russian economy looks to be slipping further and further into inflation, recession, and dare I say even depression. The New York Times has a good article that articulates in non-Economics Professor terms just what the West is doing financially to try and curtail the Mad Dog of Moscow.
Last week I advocated for severe economic punishment for Russia’s blatant disregard for Ukraine’s national sovereignty and amazingly (because who thought the Western Allies could ever agree on doing something) that punishment has been meted out.
Somewhat.
I’m hoping that the somewhat is only to give Vlad the Impersonator a taste of what could happen if full measures were in fact instituted. Hoping, but something tells me that somewhere along the line some country somewhere will do the “but we need their natural gas” and begin to fray the alliance. But as for now the sanctions currently in place are definitely worrying to Russia. Russians are lining up at ATM’s trying to get cash out. The Bank of Russia even went so far as to promise that
“The volume of bank notes ready for loading into A.T.M.s is more than sufficient. All customer funds on bank accounts are fully preserved and available for any transactions.”
Um, sure. But something tells me many Russians are getting ready to make a run on the bank which is never a good thing. Would that panic spread to the rest of the world? My college economics professor would have said yes, but the world has changed in the *cough cough* years since I took his class. As the sequel to Wall Street (the movie) said, “money never sleeps”. Besides with a government fiat against doing business with Russian banks in place, a default letter from any Russian bank will be laughed at by any foreign borrower.
Damn that let’s Trump off the hook for a while. No wonder he thought Putin’s Penetration was a smart move.
A very normal and not insane at all merch table at this year’s CPAC.
The Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) held its annual shindig last week. It was, as always, a display of insanity.
In case you missed hearing about it given Everything Else, no worries. Famous Trump Antagonizers The Lincoln Project, in response to CPAC, did the only thing they do well, create social media content. Here’s a helpful 105-second summary of the batshit madness that is CPAC:
Thanks, folks. That video points out some (but not all!) of the craziest of the crazy moments. I think it’s important to note, that while there are some people in there you might not recognize, there are elected Republican officials featured in the video.
Among the events that went on at CPAC included an awful lot of pride regarding “Let’s Go Brandon,” the obscene code they came up with about Joe Biden which they apparently think is the cleverest thing ever created. This included Smarmy Senator Ted Cruz, who seemed positively over the moon about it (see the above video).
You might think that this would cause political harm to the party, turn off “suburban moderates” and all that. But nope, not much of that talk. Needless to say, if there were an equivalent of CPAC for liberals/progressives, every move made and word spoken by The Squad or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would be hyper-analyzed and condemned by the Chuck Todds of the world as What Shall Bring Down the Party in the Midterms.
At the same time, the America First Political Action Conference was holding their big event nearby (known as AFPAC, think like AFLAC if the duck in the commercial was a neofascist). This event was created by Groypers because gosh darn it, CPAC isn’t racist enough. What on Earth is a Groyper? Well, they’re a group of sad white nationalists and far-right activists (read: awful trolls) who use that terrible Pepe the Frog meme as their symbol.
These days, the AFPAC folks are less about upstaging CPAC and more about melding the two together. The two events shared as a speaker Perennially Horrifying Human Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was introduced by AFPAC organizer and King Hate Nerd Nick Fuentes. To give you an idea of what sort of swell guy Fuentes is:
After hosting Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes condemns the media for comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, "as if that isn't a good thing."
To her “credit,” Margie denied knowing much about Fuentes, taking the tact of fellow Republican Congresscreatures who used to claim after Trump posted some terrible thing on Twitter, that they “didn’t see the Tweet” when asked about it by reporters. No idea who that guy even is, even if he did introduce me! He just was there!
There were other cross-pollinations between the two events that were wonderfully outlined by Steven Monacelli in Rolling Stone. This melding of the two events no doubt will continue, and will likely become like the end of “Animal Farm” where the pigs and the cruel humans become pretty much the same thing. Those who doubt this should watch Ted Cruz’s speech and imagine such a thing happening in the 1990s. Keep in mind, at one time CPAC was considered a fringe event, and now it is a mainstream GOP gathering.
I didn’t even bring up Trump’s bizarre speech, which included this moment:
Other than this being absolute nonsense, once again the “lock her up” chants startup, because of course they did. They are aching to imprison their political opponents.
There are some cries for the GOP to censure or otherwise discipline Margie but of course, this isn’t going to happen. It won’t happen because 1) the GOP doesn’t want to anger its base, 2) there are enough people in party leadership who agree with her, and 3) it’s not hurting them politically.
That last point is hard to ignore. If a progressive politician get more grief over outrage that not enough is being done to help disadvantaged Americans than these loony Republicans get for clearly espousing elements of fascism, well, that’s not a good look for the nation.
The last word is not about this post but goes to Stas Namin, the Russian rock musician who worked to bring peace between the US and the USSR during the 1980s via Peace Child (and came to my hometown of York, PA!), showing he never lost his idealism by performing John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” in Russian, Ukrainian, and English in 2014:
While some are feeling revitalized by the return of public Carnival, I’m feeling the opposite. I find myself in the odd position of disagreeing with my late friend Ashley Morris as seen in an image from Krewe du Vieux 2008. The secret word is:
Thanks for reinforcing that message Groucho and Duck. It begs the age-old question:
I said I had ennui, not that I’ve lost my sense of humor.
I try not to take the news personally. As a pundit, it’s best to be detached. But the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has affected my mood. The news from the battle zone is mostly bad but the Ukrainians are putting up a good fight. In the long run the good guys have a chance to prevail.
A prolonged war will be bad for morale on the Russian home front. Most Russians have ties to Ukraine and its people. If there’s an insurgency Putin’s overreach in imposing regime change on Ukraine could backfire; at least I hope so. The fog of war is as foggy as ever. Stay tuned.
As to Carnival in New Orleans, the things that usually please me leave me cold this year. And the things that vex me, are more vexatious than ever.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad many people are enjoying themselves; universal ennui would be almost as bad as universal malakatude.
I’ve wandered around the periphery of the parade route and watched bits of some parades, but I’m not feeling it.
After an extended period in lockdown, being surrounded by this many people has been disorienting. I have a plus-sized head, so I find most masks uncomfortable but I’m uncomfortable not wearing one on the parade route.
My reaction to the loutish behavior of the Chads and entitled float riders has been amplified by my pandemic isolation. I wrote about the changes in the parade route imposed by the city. That has led to parading krewes sitting on the streets they usually parade on.
While waiting to roll on Magazine Street, the riders of Krewe d’Etat lived up to their nasty right-wing themes by throwing chicken bones around. Some Popeye’s bones were aimed at passers-by. The riders found this hilarious, but their targets did not.
The parade route changes have been a clusterfuck. Even the parades that typically start on time have run late and slow because of the route changes. At least it’s given me a new mantra: How fucked up is this?
The main reason for my Carnival ennui is that the route changes have eliminated our neighborhood Thoth party. The floats and themes of Thoth are nothing special, but the spirit of the parade is. I wrote about it in January:
There’s one krewe that has been rolling up Magazine Street for many decades: the Krewe of Thoth. They’ve made it a point to parade past hospitals and other health care facilities with the aim of bringing good cheer to patients and staff alike, especially at Children’s Hospital.
The neighborhood Thoth party at the corner of Magazine and Valence has been an institution in the 22 years we’ve lived here. Many of the regulars have moved or died. In recent years, the party has felt like a tribute to those missing neighbors; well-known folk like Art Neville, and regular people like Wallace Klein who we called the Mayor of Valence Street. Here he is with another much missed but still alive neighbor, Maggie the former bookseller:
They’ve all been missed as has the route itself. I’m hoping things will right themselves next year, but one never knows in TFC: This Fucking City.
The biggest change is Carnival over the years has been the deportment and behavior of people. They’ve gotten more and more selfish, which flies in the face of the true spirit of Carnival. I don’t have it this year, but I hope to get it back in 2023.
People, I’ve got to say – I have always taken happiness in seeing the Freeperati go at each other, especially post-Darnold, where the True Believers and the pragmatists get their circular firing squad on, but this?
This is something completely different.
Video of Ukrainian woman confronting Russian soldier goes viral: Put sunflower seeds in your pocket ‘so at least [flowers] will grow’ when you’re killed The Blaze ^ | 2/25/2022 | Sara Taylor
A fiery Ukrainian women went viral for her reaction to a Russian soldier patrolling a Ukrainian street earlier this week.
What are the details? The unnamed woman — dressed in nearly all black and wearing a white winter hat — was seen in a video shared to social media telling off a Russian soldier and suggesting he carry sunflower seeds in his pockets — so that when he is killed on foreign soil, flowers will sprout from his decomposing body.
“Put them in your pockets,” she stoically told the soldier during one point of the interaction, “so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”
The sunflower, which is Ukraine’s national flower, is often said to represent power, strength, warmth, and more.
Elsewhere in the video, the woman could be heard telling the soldier, “You’re occupants, you’re fascists! What the f*** are you doing on our land with all these guns?”
She added, “From this moment, you are cursed. I’m telling you. You f***ing came here uninvited.”
Now, you know that the “it’s not our fight/Putin’s a great guy” types, conditioned by four years plus of Trumpism, are going to try to downplay Putin’s Hitler impersonation. (My fave blogger Shower Cap called Putin “Underpants Gnome Mussolini”)
.
You also know they’re going to get some pushback from the Freepers who have had about enough of The Darnold and his dictator pals.
Right?
To: marcusmaximus
Should the soldier be there? No.
But he was actually restrained and polite.
He restrained himself from shooting her in front of a bunch of witnesses recording on their phones.
He’ll politely be rounding her up when there are no witnesses around.
She is lucky the Russian soldier she spoke to chose to treat her like a fussy old Grandma. He may have known at least one person was filming the interaction.
If there were no cameras rolling and you had a more combative type of soldier, she could have gotten rifle-butted in the head or much worse.
Today in “Things no one but me cares about” – the CBS Sunday Morning trumpet theme.
I’ve been watching this show since Charles Kuralt hosted it, and was surprised to find out that the demographic is not just old farts like me, but actually placed first in its time slot in the key demographic of adults 25–54, beating all of the political discussion-driven Sunday morning talk shows.
The issue I have is with the trumpet piece that opens the show.
It’s “Abblasen”, attributed to Gottfried Reiche. It’s a pretty famous fanfare, and was performed for decades as written, by Doc Severinson.
Then, after over twenty years, they replaced it with a version done by Wynton Marsalis.
I guess they thought that jazzing it up (always a great idea for a fanfare written in the 1730s) would make it hipper or something.
It sucks.
The slides, smears, cadenzas, and jazzy grace notes in the new version are so annoying that I mute the sound every time.
I guess the next thing is to redo “Fur Elise” with a drum machine and an autotuned vocal.
Stick to jazz, Wynton.
This is what it actually reads like, BTW :
See any slides, smears, cadenzas, and grace notes in there?
Neither do I.
Don Smithers played it for them first, and he didn’t add any jazz “improvements” to it, either.
This has been a terrible week. Incredibly we are watching a war in progress and we really have no idea what is going to happen. We’re in the early days of what is going to be a grisly and heartbreaking war. I don’t think it’s going to get any better for a very long time.
I’m not going to mythologize the Ukrainian people as a group of warriors because, from the TV interviews I’ve seen with them, their emotions run the entire gamut. But there have been some people who are showing great courage.
When I first read about Volodymyr Zelensky it was an article about how a comedian was running for the presidency of Ukraine. I started to scoff, but then I remembered that I thought Al Franken was a pretty good politician so I stopped.
My first impression was wrong. The thing about Zelensky is that on paper he’s in way over his head. But he beat back TFG’s demands and now he’s putting his life on the line for his country by standing up to Putin. Friday we leaned that the US offered to get him out of Kyiv and he refused. We saw such extraordinary courage from an unexpected source.
Another Ukrainian who showed incredible courage was the babushka who berated the Russian soldiers in her town:
"Take these seeds so sunflowers grow here when you die"
I am ethnically a Slav: my mom and my dad are 100% Slavic. Their parents were 100% Slavic. These are my people. The command to put sunflower (the Ukrainian national flower) seeds in your pockets because you will die there and the sunflowers will then mark your grave and your failure is striking and chilling and maybe prophetic.
I hate war and conflict and killing. I also hate injustice. This week has been terrible. But the defiance of that comedian and that babushka hearten me.
On Friday David Bowie’s son responded to a tweet from Russia Today quoting his father with this:
Gary Brooker the driving force behind the great British rock band Procol Harum died this week at the age of 76. The best way to pay tribute to him is by sharing his music.
We begin our tribute to Gary Brooker with a 1976 set from German teevee:
The next video feels almost ripped from the headlines. It’s a 2001 appearance by Procol Harum in Moscow:
We move to the audio only segment of our tribute.
Here’s Brooker singing Old Brown Shoe at 2002’s Concert For George:
Finally, a 1971 Procol Harum set with Robin Trower before he went on to solo guitar god glory.
I’m still muddling through Carnival. Russian aggression against Ukraine hasn’t helped my morale, but I’m plugging away on the periphery of the parade route. I’m still leery of crowds and determined not to catch COVID as has happened to several of my vaxxed and boosted friends. So it goes.
Speaking of Carnival, I’d like to thank everyone for making Letter From New Orleans: Nix On Nyx our most read post so far this year. Was it the Felix and the Bag Lady featured image?
James Taylor wrote this week’s theme song for 1971’s Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon album. It’s my favorite JT LP.
We have four versions of You Can Close Your Eyes for your listening pleasure: the studio original, JT live with Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and Susanna Hoffs & Matthew Sweet.
Keep your eyes wide open, jumping to the break can be dangerous.
Today marks the end of Rodgers & Hart month. There’s no better song with which to close it out.
The Lady Is A Tramp was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the smash hit 1937 musical Babes In Arms. It was featured in the 1957 film version of R & H’s hit show Pal Joey. That’s why I associate it with the Chairman of the Board. Hence the Hayworth-Sinatra-Novak featured image.
This week’s post is bookmarked by two of my favorite artists: Sinatra and Oscar Peterson. We begin with Francis Albert.
Ella Fitzgerald’s version is *almost* as good as Frank’s.
Here are Frank and Ella together on his 1965 A Man and his Music teevee special:
It’s been such a bleak news week that I thought some good news was in order. President Biden is nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace the Supreme for whom she clerked, Stephen Breyer. It’s the sensible choice. Judge Jackson has been confirmed twice by the senate, the second time by *this* senate 53-44.
The romantic in me hoped that they’d go outside the Harvard-Yale-Federal Judge complex, but it was not to be. I should have known better: Biden picked the frontrunner to be his Veep and he’s done the same thing with Judge Jackson. Biden has made history twice by selecting Kamala Harris and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Well done, sir.
As a former criminal lawyer, I like her background in criminal justice reform as well as her years as a federal public defender. She’s a conventional choice in many ways but this part of her CV is not. She’s the first public defender to be named to SCOTUS. For more background info, get thee to an explainer by Ian Millhiser at Vox.
Biden has been criticized for announcing in advance that he was selecting a Black woman for SCOTUS. I’m here to praise him for keeping a campaign promise. Black women are the most loyal part of the Democratic coalition. If it was okay for Reagan to make and keep a similar promise, it’s okay for Biden. Besides, O’Connor was easily Reagan’s best nominee.
Republican opposition to the Jackson nomination is likely to be ugly and racist. Anyone surprised?
Three GOPers voted to confirm her for the appellate bench: Graham, Collins, and Murkowski. The latter faces a challenge from a Trumper in her 2022 reelection race but it still the most likely aye vote. Murkowski is a genuine conservative not an unprincipled hack like Graham and Collins. Judge Jackson grew up in Miami but is unlikely to be supported by Bat Boy and born-again Trump lackey, Marco Rubio.
Graham has already developed a case of judicial vote amnesia:
If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.
The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked.
Well here we are, the place we never thought we’d be at but the place we always knew deep down we’d get to.
Russia, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has without reason, provocation, or seemingly sanity, has invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine because…well if I could figure out why I’d be on the Kremlin Desk at the Company and briefing the bigwigs in the White House. In other words, I can’t figure it out and anyone who says they KNOW why he did it is just blowing smoke up that proverbial backside.
Some of the reasons expounded by the experts for this intolerable exercise in cruelty include: one last shot for greatness as he heads into this 70th year, having Belarus invite him and his army in two years ago so that he had a staging ground for the attack and not wanting to waste it, wanting to stop Ukraine’s infatuation with the West and dangling toes in the waters of NATO, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his efforts to counter Kremlin influence in his country (ie, arresting Vlad’s BFF Viktor Medvedchuk) and about a thousand other reasons that have been floated in the past 48 hours.
Then of course there are his Fantasyland reasons actually stated as justifications for the invasion about getting rid of Nazis or seeing it as a preemptive move against a Western alliance just aching to take over Mother Russia. Got news for you big guy, nobody wants Russia. Unless your name is Napoleon or Hitler and neither of those courting calls went so well.
My favorite of his stated reasons, from the speech announcing the invasion, sounds like it could have come from the mouths of any number of Repugnicant politicians or enablers:
They sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature. This is not going to happen.
Yeah, Russian traditional values. They don’t bother with culture wars, they just go straight to the new fangled Cossacks riding helicopters instead of horses. Excuse me if I don’t buy into your indignation Vlad, but my family has seen this movie before.
And while many see this as the end result of his manipulation of the West over the span of the last 30 years, I would argue this is just the beginning. If he is allowed to continue with his decimation of an independent Ukraine, he will take it further. Poland was once a Soviet client state and you can just bet he wants it back in his hip pocket. Same goes for Romania, the former Yugoslavian states, and all the way up to the border of Germany where he used to play his reindeer games in the East and helped the Stassi keep tabs on the local populace.
Springsteen was right, poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and the king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything. What Putin wants is to be Tsar Vladimir I, emperor of the East, protector of the Russian people, benevolent dictator of all he surveys.
Fortunately in our modern world we have ways to fight a war that don’t involve the wholesale slaughter of millions. And it is time we invoke those methods to put the hurt on this rama lama ding dong. Go all in on economic sanctions. Not the easy to get around “oh we’re not really buying their oil, we’re just trading them arms for oil” sanctions. I mean like all his billionaire oligarch friends pull up their bank accounts tomorrow morning to find them frozen or better yet empty. No sin in stealing back that which was stolen in the first place. Effectively cut his credit cards in half by kicking Russia out of the international banking system. Let all his customers know that if they deal with him they don’t get to deal with us or our friends.
In other words, run his country’s economy back into the stone age. Will it hurt everyday Russians? Yeah, sorry about that but once your troops are out of Ukraine and Vlad’s locked up in Lubyanka with all his friends and relations we’ll ease up on the sanctions and bring you back into the 21st Century. Only this time it’ll be the right way. If Norway can cut their entire population in on those North Sea Crude petrodollars I don’t see why Russia can’t.
By the way, I’m not buying those protests in Red Square. Putin’s own Rasputin, Vladislav Surkov, the true inventor of “fake news” loves to encourage opponent, or at least seemingly opponent, forces to make displays of outrage whenever Putin makes some controversial move. The crisis actors are arrested and released. The actual protesters, not so much. Surkov is another one who can spend some years behind bars contemplating his role in the destruction of truth as an absolute.
Jaime took my first choice for music and El Jefe took my second choice, so I’ll just have to go with Edwin Starr’s anthem from my youth. So tell me Vlad, just what IS it good for? Cause the answer is still NOTHIN’.
This is a combination of heartbreaking and surreal. Some people going to work, some people bugging out. I thought, of course, some people would go to work if America is attacked, for the combination of necessary services still needed and, well, think about some aspects of American business leadership. The heartbreaking ranges from just the general feeling of terrified humanity that you always find in war, to a reservist on his way to report for duty worried about his pets.
There are, of course, those on the left who refused to see what was happening, denied an invasion was going to happen for whatever reason. And still don’t. There really is this bizarre impulse to defend Putin, a man who oversees a fossil-fuel economy, has a long history as a climate-change denier, and a terrible record on LGBTQ rights, among other things. It also raises questions about how one can be anti-war but blame Ukraine for this. But I think this is overblown, as these misguided people have no real power in the United States and to say they all represent “the left” is nonsense hippie punching.
There are, however, people with power on the right who are all-in with the entire thing. This, for example, is quite a statement by an ex-president. Steve Bannon, who is basically cosplaying Baron Harkonnen in David Lynch’s version of “Dune,” and War Profiteer Erik Prince say we should support Russia because they are anti-woke. They are much closer to the GOP mainstream than say Jill Stein is to the Democrats. Republicans politicians, for the most part, seem to be saying the right things this morning but they also did so on January 7, 2021.
Putin made it clear that this isn’t just about eastern Ukraine (they’ve already broken that promise by attacking almost the entire country) nor is it really about Ukraine and NATO. In a bizarre speech Monday, he seemed to indicate he wants to return to not the Cold War era, but the Tsarist era. In one speech, he pretty much blew up any defense of him as a man put out by the threat to his west. Of course, he knows there will be people won’t hear that part of it, because he’s a man who will say anything because he knows, in a deep way, that it won’t matter because of the era we’re currently in.
We are in an era where truth and reality are negotiable. We’ve seen plenty of New York Times headlines that are so focused on “BOTH SIDES” that there are multiple versions of “Experts say the Earth is round. But some disagree.” We have freedom of speech, but these people take advantage of that, forcing us to do some hard thinking, from Joe Rogan and pandemic misinformation to banning Donald Trump from Twitter. What happens when a freedom becomes a club wielded by bad actors? It’s a frightening thought that I don’t think all that many people considered.
This is driven by social media, of course. Social media enables bots and regular people to share misinformation faster than pre-social media, constantly proving that giving humanity social media was like giving excitable toddlers a can of gas and a book of matches. Plus, thanks to webcams, you can watch the events unfold in real-time while a constant stream of complete insanity (the comments) scroll by to the right.
Who knows where we go next with this. It ranges from bad to unthinkable. But here we are, a war in Europe with scenes that look depressingly and strangely like what we saw in WWII.
The last word goes to Talking Heads, a sadly appropriate song for the moment.
Flags are flying in Ukraine as a gesture of defiance as Russia invades. Flags can’t ward off bombs and bullets, but they can lift spirits.
The Russian dictator is doing what dictators do: lying in the face of raw naked aggression.
Here’s the LIE LIST:
Putin claims that the invasion is a “special operation” for the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine.
Putin claims that Nazis run Ukraine and the invasion is a sequel to the Great Patriotic War.
Putin claims that Ukraine is developing weapons of mass destruction. .
Putin claims that Russia is encircled by NATO. Ukraine is not a member, and its candidacy is not under discussion.
American liars such as Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson are lying on behalf of the Russian dictator. Trump called Putin a “genius” the other day. Wrong. Putin is just the latest in a long line of Russian tyrants with bloodstained hands.
Russian imperialism may be rewarded in the short term but in the long term this could doom Putin. Ukraine is a large country with a population of 44 million. Does he plan to occupy Ukraine indefinitely in the face of a possible insurgency? That worked so well for the United States in Vietnam and Iraq and for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
I thought Putin was bluffing because an invasion of Ukraine is not in his interest. Putin’s personal lockdown during the pandemic has left him isolated and fixated on Ukraine.
Putin’s revanchist impulses have led to this war of choice. From the Ukrainian perspective, this is a war in defense of freedom and self-determination. The Trumpist right has misappropriated the word freedom. It’s time to take it back.
The last word goes to the music of Modest Mussorgsky with two versions of The Great Gate of Kyiv.
Maybe the worst of both, with a generous helping of boilerplate GOP Wingnut, occasionally lurching from surprising-obscurity-for-a-Senator-from-a-large-State to spew Grapefruit League Kevin McCarthy-ish sound bites…
Sound, fury, signifying nothing, though with the assumption (sadly, correct) that his bigoted rhetoric will automatically be given serious consideration.
When you’re in the opposition and your party lacks a clear leader (other than your mad exiled king), there are plenty of opportunities for political entrepreneurship. If you come up with a new way to threaten trans kids or a bold new agenda for Republicans to follow should they take over Congress, you can get a bunch of attention and perhaps boost your profile and ambitions.
…
The 11 points resemble policy proposals, but every one is wrapped in culture-war provocation.
…
…it doesn’t hurt to have something you can call an agenda, no matter how phony or insincere it is. It garners news coverage that paints you, however inaccurately, as serious about governing. Then after you win, it allows you to propagate a story about the election — again, however inaccurately — that claims you have a mandate from the public for whatever ludicrous ideas you want to pursue.
…
The Republican Party has become little more than an engine of resentment, one that runs on whatever fuel seems to be supercharging its supporters’ anger this month. Putting it in a glossy brochure doesn’t make it any more legitimate.
A year ago, none of them had heard of critical race theory; now they all claim it’s the most important thing in the world, once they remembered how powerful a motivator White grievance can be. A few weeks from now, they might decide that making trans kids’ lives miserable has politically run its course, and they’ll turn to something else. What it adds up to is not so much an “agenda” as a rotating list of things to be mad about.
One thing’s for sure: Republicans are feeling as confident as they ever have, and they won’t be bothered with complicated problems that demand difficult policy solutions. It’s going to be nothing but culture war from here on out.
Yep.
Add a media that prefers clickbait to actual journalism, with a generous helping of Murdoch media that pushes equivalent garbage (e.g., Biden crack pipes)…
It’s almost a miracle we haven’t already degenerated into a real-life version of Succession…yet.
It’s time for our fourth annual Muses Thursday PFT post. I’m neither attending the parade nor entertaining and have a case of Carnival ennui after writing about the Noxious Krewe of Nyx yesterday.
Here’s where I repeat myself:
I know what you’re thinking: when in pulp fiction doubt, post a Perry Mason cover. Guilty as charged. It’s also relevant this Muses Thursday. That all chick krewe throws decorated shoes.
I’ve also posted a cleaned up version of the cover that I stumbled into on the artist’s website. Thanks to John Farr.
I’ve been rewatching the Klugman-Randall Odd Couple teevee series. I even threw in a picture of Oscar’s bedroom in yesterday’s The Iceman Melteth post. It was almost as scary as the Putin-Stalin images.
A hyper-local New Orleans Carnival controversy inspired me to spend too much time taking and editing the above screenshots from The Odd Couple’s opening credits. It was a sequence in which Felix Unger tries to help an old lady cross the street only to be hit with her purse. It’s hard being Felix.
You’re probably wondering what I’m on about. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. Decorated purses are the signature throw of the Krewe of Nyx who are rolling tonight on the truncated Uptown parade route I wrote about in my last letter from New Orleans. Crowds may be lighter than usual because of a series of scandals involving the Krewe and its grifter Captain, Julie Lea.
There were rumblings for years about shady financial doings in the Krewe of Nyx. As a connoisseur of gossip, I ate it up. Does that make me a gossip gourmet or gourmand?
Nyx started in 2011 and exploded to some 3,500 riders and 82 floats by 2020. The numbers are inexact because of the sketchiness of krewe leadership, which claims to have 240 riders on 17 floats this year. The minimums to get a permit are 200 riders and 14 floats. Unfortunately, the City of NO said yes, yes. yes to Nyx this year.
The mass exodus of riders was initially sparked when the krewe’s founder and captain, former New Orleans police officer Julie Lea, sent out an Instagram post after the police murder of George Floyd stating “All Lives Matter.”
Many members of the racially diverse all-female krewes were outraged and blasted Lea for being insensitive. Lea tried to apologize, but she refused to embrace the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”
Despite the best efforts of gentrifying developers, New Orleans is still a majority Black city. The “all lives matter” thing did not play well here.
Things got worse for the Noxious Krewe of Nyx. A series of civil lawsuits were filed against Captain Lea and her krewe including:
Former members are circulating a copy of a 2015 amendment to the krewe’s bylaws which state “membership shall be restricted to those persons whose original birth certificate reflect them to be female.”
Former member Vee George, who decided not to renew after the racial rift, said many of the dissenting ex-members were unaware of the language in the bylaws.
“The tone at the top is exclusionary. It’s not inclusive,” she said. “And to be completely honest with you, there’s no place for that in 2020 when you have a platform of inclusion and diversity.”
Repeat after me: Always read the bylaws.
I used to have many friends who rode in Nyx. They’ve all said Nix to Nyx and quit. I was never a fan of the krewe’s themes or floats, but the riders had spirit and the purses were a cool idea. They were a knock-off of the Muses shoes but a clever one.
In 2022, Nyx is reduced to being supported by wingnuts who scream cancel culture and censorship:
Here’s a better look at the offending and offensive beads:
Guess what Lost Causers: you lost, and we won. The statue is down and never returning to its place of honor at St. Charles Avenue. You can take the Lee Statue and stick it where the moon don’t shine.
Back to the so-called Mystic Krewe of Nyx.
In Greek mythology, Nyx is the goddess of or personification of night. She was such a badass that even Zeus feared her. I, of course, bitterly resent the appropriation of Greek mythology by the racist grifter Captain and her vestigial krewe. Instead, they should use the Roman equivalent Nox since they’re a noxious group who will be polluting the streets of my city tonight.
Back to the featured image. I see Nyx as the woman handbagging Felix who stands-in for the citizens of New Orleans. It’s an inexact analogy as Felix was a clean freak but Oscar was a lovable mess much like my city.
Some plan to protest the Krewe of Nox Nyx tonight, Dr. A and I plan to sit on the sofa and watch Billions and The Gilded Age on DVR. That means we’ll get our share of grifters without watching Nox Nyx roll by for hopefully the last time. It’s time for the City of New Orleans to Nix Nyx.
The last word goes to Neil Hefti with The Odd Couple (Movie) Soundtrack Suite:
I just realized that I got through this post without a single Nixon pun. I must be slipping.
On Tuesday Senator Rick Scott of Florida released his “Rescue America” plan. The plan is divided into 11 major points of action, and it is a deep hole of crazy all the way down.
No Republican Party office holder can do anything without first paying fealty to The King of the GOP, so rest assured that that is covered in the document:
We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.
I hope there is a naming contest. OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE!!
There is the boilerplate GOP stuff, of course, like this about abortion:
Abortion kills human children. To deny that is to deny science.
Whether you believe in God or not, as a civilized people who accept science, we must protect babies, born and unborn, from all acts of violence.
The Supreme Court is set to essentially–and possibly wholly–abolish abortion, so that’s an easy promise to make. But that’s not going to be the end of the attack on women. See, last week all 3 Republican candidates for Michigan attorney general said they opposed the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that established that privacy is a right, and led to the eventual legalization of birth control. So as extreme as Scott’s positions are, there are far more extreme ones coming down the pike.
The BUT MUH FREEDOM people have a very detailed list of things the rest of us are going to be forced to do:
No federal program or tax laws will reward people for being unmarried or discriminate against marriage.
Even though many single moms heroically do the job of raising a family (as my mom often had to) children need and deserve both parents – and government should not be shy about saying so.
Hmmm, no more laws that “reward people for being unmarried”. That, and the criminalization of birth control, portend a pretty scary future.
But it’s not the culture war stuff that caught my eye—the Christian Nationalist stuff did. And then the document started to make more sense. Scott is the chair of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, which means his job is fundraising, and he released this document in conjunction with his responsibilities there.
Christian Nationalism is an ideology which merges radical right wing Christianity with democracy, and which seeks to privilege Christians and their beliefs above all. Christian Nationalism has been a staple in American politics for a century, and as our political conversation has become more radically right wing, its ideas are now openly flaunted by the Republican Party.
Christian Nationalism’s primary opponent is secularism, the non-prioritization of any or no religion over any other. Because Christian Nationalists believe that they have Christian privilege, everyone who is not one of them has to be destroyed.
The current target of their war on secularism is trans kids: bathrooms, sports, etc. In the past their targets have been Catholics, immigrants, interracial marriage, same sex marriage, women voting, etc. Their targets shift as the larger environment shifts. And you can see their bigger goals in this document:
Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science.
No government forms will include questions about “gender identity” or “sexual preference.”
Yes, they want to legislate LGBTQ people out of existence (they want to do the same for BIPOC with similar proposals for reporting race).
But the clearest statement of their desire to impose their beliefs on the rest of us is in “Point Ten: Religious Liberty/Big Tech” where they specifically call out secularism and accuse Big Tech of creating a new religion:
The Democrat Party and their Big Tech allies are not merely secular; they have virtually created a new religion of wokeness that is increasingly hostile toward people of faith, particularly Christians and Jews. They are determined to drive all mention of God out of public view. We will not be silenced, canceled, or told what words to use by the politically correct crowd.
Every American will be free to live out their religious convictions in the public square, not only in the home or a place of worship.
So they’re going to be harassing us at work, and when we renew our drivers license, when we’re at the post office, and when we’re registering to vote. And before anyone gets out the pitchforks, I am a practicing Christian, but I’m not a Christian Nationalist and I don’t want their right wing Christian nonsense shoved down my throat.
They want to empty the government coffers into their own pockets:
We will forbid government programs from discriminating against the 350,000 religious entities which operate schools, pregnancy resource centers, soup kitchens, drug addiction programs, homeless shelters, and adoption agencies.
And with the 1/6 insurrection still fresh in our minds, this, from that same section, is terrifying:
Remember – the Second Amendment was established in order to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.
The saving grace of all of this awfulness (and you should read the whole thing) is that the attack ads against Republican Senate candidates write themselves. Let’s hope that actually happens.
Even great artists such as Jimmy Smith have the occasional silly album cover, but this is ridiculous. It should be called Who’s Afraid Of A Chick In A Wolf Mask?
The album itself is excellent. Here it is in the YouTube playlist format:
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
While Russian troops advance into Ukraine, the Russian economy looks to be slipping further and further into inflation, recession, and dare I say even depression. The New York Times has a good article that articulates in non-Economics Professor terms just what the West is doing financially to try and curtail the Mad Dog of Moscow.
